Walt Mossberg Reviews The New Apple TV

Apple TV hasn’t been successful so far but this new device is a lot different than the past models of Apple TV. The form factor is identical to the Roku XDS that we just bought. The Roku is a great device. We get streaming NetFlix TV and movies, Pandora music, and Picasa Pictures. If you pay, you can get Major League Baseball, Hockey and Hulu Plus too. It is a perfect application for cloud computing. But it also plays local content if you hook up a hard drive. I highly recommend it.

I suspect the Apple TV thingie is Apple’s version of the Roku because Apple has got religion about competing in the ‘cloud computing’ Internet-centric future of multimedia. To me, these devices represent the perfect example of the so-called convergence of computing and multimedia that people have been talking about since the late 1990s. Broadband speeds to the home are what make this possible.

Take a look at what Walt Mossberg has to say about Apple’s gizmo in the video below.